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And watch the Ice Blog for more about them soon.

Your Ice Blogger has been in Antalya in Turkey for a few days. Turkish Radio TRT organised an international radio contest for programmes on climate change. The 10 finalists were invited to take part in the radio festival, listening to each other’s work and adding their views to those of the “Grand Jury”. I am honoured to have been awarded the 2nd prize for the 2nd part of my “Climate College in Alaska” series: “Meeting the Inupiat”.

Interviewing a young Inupiat eskimo Kajan, featured in the programme. The photo was taken by Marc Cornelissen of the Climate Change College.
All about the Climate Change College

This was the series which led to the Ice Blog.
The Alaskan Arctic Series – audio features and photos

Thank you TRT, firstly for putting climate change in the limelight by making it the subject of the competition. And thank you for giving international radio broadcasters the chance to discuss the issue with one another and learn from each other. Congratulations to our Greek colleagues, who won 1st prize, Dutch colleagues who got the 3rd and Korean colleagues who won the innovation prize. And thanks for honouring DW with the 2nd prize.
All about the TRT Turquoise 2008 Climate Change Radio Contest and the Finalists

This week’s Arctic news has been pretty drastic. The current autumn temperature is five degrees higher than the average. 2007 was the warmest year ever in the Arctic, since people started to record the temperature. The sea ice, as we know, has decreased dramatically.
This is all based on figures from NOAA, the US climate research body (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
NOAA statistics and reports
The Polarstern (translates as Pole Star), the research vessel belonging to the German polar agency AWI (Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research) returned to base after being the first research vessel to sail right round the north pole because the north-west passage was open as well as the north-east.
The Polarstern voyage around the North Pole
White ice and snow reflect heat back into the atmosphere. Water,open because the ice has melted, is darker and absorbs heat, warming the ocean further. The Arctic is heating up at an alarming rate.
“Rudy” sent a comment in to the Ice Blog. He still isn’t convinced about global warming, it seems. I’m still trying to understand how that can be and what his point of view is.
Rudy, forgive me for not publishing the comment, but it contains abridged quotes from people without the context. Without being able to check the context, I can’t put them up here.
I’m happy to pick up on some of your points, though.
You’re right. Thankfully, the Arctic was not ice-free in 2008.(I didn’t think it would be, neither did most reliable sources I follow). But sea-ice cover hit a record low in 2007 and is not recovering. The North-West passage has been open. And the warming trend is continuing. Changes in flora and fauna are being witnessed and recorded. This is happening. And things are changing fast.
You say winds and circulation are causes of sea-ice melting, not global warming. Sure, winds and circulation play an important role. Nobody would dispute that. But these factors are all connected. And the climate is changing. I’ve talked to scientists from all over the world who are desperately trying to make predictions for the future. Nobody has a crystal ball. But we know humankind is pumping masses of CO2 into the atmosphere, melting permafrost is releasing methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere at an increasing rate. Of course there are natural climate cycles. But we are having our own effect.
I was talking to some British friends this weekend, who suggested we should really get away from the misleading “global warming” talk and refer to “climate change”. Apart from the jokes about the British wanting warmer weather anyway – of course climate change manifests itself in colder weather in some places at some times. Is it just the “global warming” term that bothers you?
What bothers me right now is that our EU countries are thinking about reducing their commitment to climate-saving measures because of the global financial crisis. If we don’t take action now, we might not have a globe we can live on, let alone finances to worry about.
I wish someone could convince me that’s too pessimistic?

The Ice Blog hasn’t been updated for a few days, but only because of technical problems, not a lack of stories, I could have been writing non-stop.
It will take a while to catch up, but I have to start with sharing my “small world” story with you.
I was on the plane (sorry, yes, but for a greater cause…) to Barcelona for the IUCN World Conservation Congress.

(I know this is a boat, not a plane, but it is all related. Bear with me – and see below):

(This is the TARA, a famous Arctic research vessel, far from the Arctic, but still in the service of publicising global warming, open to the public at the IUCN congress in Barcelona).

Meanwhile, back on that plane: I got talking to my neighbour from the USA, who was also heading for the event. He turned out to be Gary Braasch, a nature photographer who is now dedicating almost his entire work to photographically documenting and publishing climate change.
The climate photographer’s global warming website
He told me how he became so concerned about global warming back in the 1990s that he decided to start working on that theme – and has never stopped since.
He got his latest book out of his bag to let me have a look.
Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World (University of California Press).
I am trying to acquire a copy. The photos are great – and the information, as far as I can judge from a skim on the way to Barcelona – is thorough but readable.
“Oh, the inevitable polar bear”, I said.
“I’ve got much more beautiful pics of polar bears” – says Gary.
“But they’ll be on ice, this one’s on land, because his seea ice is melting away” – says IQ.
“Exactly”, says Gary, evidently pleased to be sitting beside a kindred spirit.
His picture reminded me of a segment from an interview I had just been editing, with the ornithologist and indirect climate change monitor George Divoky.
George Divoky and Friends of Cooper Island
George told me in the interview that the sea ice was on the retreat, the permafrost of his island was melting and his campsite was being visited too frequently by polar bears who wouldn’t have touched it with a bear-claw before.
I told Gary the story.
“That’s George’s camp” – he said. “That’s where I took that picture – and we had to call search and rescue because of the bear”.
A small planet indeed.

This is some of the flotilla of sailing boats that brought committed conservationists to Barcelona in Spain for the IUCN congress. Not a bad idea. It drew loads of spectators down to the port for the “Sailing to Barcelona” parade and boat village, where they could visit the research boats and find out about scientific research.
My colleague Nina Haase and I were guests on board the “Garlaban”, which is chartered for marine research by the “Institut Océanographique Paul Ricard”. Thanks again to the Institute’s President Patricia Ricard our skipper “Jacqui” for letting us be on the boat and record interviews with the scientists and crew for our report on “Sailing to Barcelona” for the environment.
All about the marine research of the institute

On Friday morning, I was unpleasantly jolted awake by an item in the radio news, saying the world’s CO2 emissions had reached record levels.The Global Carbon Project – a respected international research consortium – tells us in its report Carbon Budget 2007Global Carbon Project
that our Co2 levels are already 37% higher than the benchmark of 1750, with the start of the Industrial Revolution. The scientists say the present concentration of 383 parts per million is the highest during the last 650,000 years, probably even the last 20 million years.
Even since the advent of this millennium, emissions have been rising drastically. And it’s not as if we aren’t aware of the related problems.
If you go searching the internet, you’ll find bloggers and the usual sites are reporting on the GCP report.
Climate Blog from Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (German language, but some good English links)
But on the mainstream media over the weekend, it virtually petered out into nothing.
Emissions have been increasing hugely in China and India. But they haven’t been decreasing in the developed, industrialised, wealthy world either. Will we never learn? Has the message still not come across?
We’re still burning far too much in the way of fossil fuels, deforestation is still going on, and all our carbon sinks – including the ocean and the forests- are losing some of their ability to absorb carbon.
This report is based on data from the UN, on climate resarch published in all the major journals, on sophisticated models and on energy daty collected by BP, which is unlikely to be exaggerating the dangers from burning fossil fuels.
This has got to be a wake-up call. But I have the impression a lot of people just went back to sleep once the alarm had gone off.
Yes, I realize we could be facing another Big Depression – but isn’t the fact that global warming is proving almost impossible to stop, with potentially catastrophic results for the planet worth a bit more attention?